Madonna Mary

“It is only Will,” said Mary. “Wilfrid, it is your uncle, whom you have not seen for so long. This was my baby,” she added, turning to her brother-in-law, with an anxious smile – for Wilfrid was a boy who puzzled strangers, and was not by any means so sure to make a good impression as the others were. Mr. Ochterlony shook hands with the new-comer, but he surveyed him a little doubtfully. He was about thirteen, a long boy, with big wrists and ankles visible, and signs of rapid growth. His face did not speak of country air and fare and outdoor life and healthful occupation like his brother’s, but was pale and full of fancies and notions which he did not reveal to everybody. He came in and put down his books and threw himself into a chair with none of his elder brother’s shamefacedness. Will, for his part, was not given to blushing. He knew nothing of his uncle’s visit, but he took it quietly as a thing of course, and prepared to take part in the conversation, whatever its subject might be.

“Mr. Small has done very well for them all,” said Mary, taking heart again; “he has always done very well with his pupils. Mr. Cramer was very much satisfied with the progress Islay had made; and as for Hugh – ”

“He is quite clever enough for Hugh,” said Will, with the same steady voice.

Mr. Ochterlony, though he was generally so grave, was amused. “My young friend, are you sure you are a judge?” he said. “Perhaps he is not clever enough for Wilfrid – is that what you meant to say?”

“It is not so much the being clever,” said the boy. “I think he has taught me as much as he knows, so it is not his fault. I wish we had been sent to school; but Hugh is all right. He knows as much as he wants to know, I suppose; and as for Islay, his is technical,” the young critic added with a certain quiet superiority. Will, poor fellow, was the clever one of the family, and somehow he had found it out.

Mr. Ochterlony looked at this new representative of his race with a little alarm. Perhaps he was thinking that, on the whole, it was as well not to have boys; and then, as much from inability to carry on the conversation as from interest in his own particular subject, he returned to Hugh.

“The best plan, perhaps, will be for Hugh to go back with me to Earlston; that is, if it is not disagreeable to you,” he said, in his old-fashioned, polite way. “I have been too long thinking about it, and his position must be made distinct. Oxford would be the best; that would be good for him in every way. And I think afterwards he might pay a little attention to the estate. I never could have believed that babies grew into boys, and boys to men, so quickly. Why, it can barely be a few years since – Ah!” Mr. Ochterlony got up very precipitately from his chair. It was Aunt Agatha who had come into the room, with her white hair smoothed under her white cap, and her pretty Shetland shawl over her shoulders. Then he perceived that it was more than a few years since he had last seen her. The difference was more to him than the difference in the boys, who were creatures that sprang up nobody knew how, and were never to be relied upon. That summer morning when she came to Earlston to claim her niece, Miss Seton had been old; but it was a different kind of age from that which sat upon her soft countenance now. Francis Ochterlony had not for many a year asked himself in his seclusion whether he was old or young. His occupations were all tranquil, and he had not felt himself unable for them; but if Agatha Seton was like this, surely then it must indeed be time to think of an heir.

The day passed with a curious speed and yet tardiness, such as is peculiar to days of excitement. When they were not talking of the boys, nobody could tell what to talk about. Once or twice, indeed, Mr. Ochterlony began to speak of the Numismatic Society, or the excavations at Nineveh, or some other cognate subject; but he always came to a standstill when he caught Aunt Agatha’s soft eyes wondering over him. They had not talked about excavations, nor numismatics either, the last time he had been here; and there was no human link between that time and this, except the boys, of whom they could all talk; and to this theme accordingly everybody returned. Hugh came in audibly, leaving his basket at the kitchen door as he passed, and Islay, with his long head and his deep eyes, came down from his room where he was working, and Will kept his seat in the big Indian chair in the corner, where he dangled his long legs, and listened. Everybody felt the importance of the moment, and was dreadfully serious, even when lighter conversation was attempted. To show the boys in their best light, each of the three, and not so to show them as if anybody calculated upon, or was eager about the uncle’s patronage; to give him an idea of their different characters, without any suspicion of “showing off,” which the lads could not have tolerated; all this was very difficult to the two anxious women, and required such an amount of mental effort as made it hard to be anything but serious. Fortunately, the boys themselves were a little excited by the novelty of such a visitor, and curious about their uncle, not knowing what his appearance might mean. Hugh flushed into a singular mixture of exaltation, and suspicion, and surprise, when Mr. Ochterlony invited him to Earlston; and looked at his mother with momentary distrust, to see if by any means she had sought the invitation; and Wilfrid sat and dangled his long legs, and listened, with an odd appreciation of the fact that the visit was to Hugh, and not to himself, or any more important member of the family. As for Islay, he was always a good fellow, and like himself; and his way was clear before him, and admitted of no hopes or fears except as to whether or not he should succeed at his examination, which was a matter about which he had himself no very serious doubts, though he said little about it; and perhaps on the whole it was Islay, who was quite indifferent, whom Mr. Ochterlony would have fixed his choice upon, had he been at liberty to choose.

When the visitor departed, which he did the same evening, the household drew a long breath; everybody was relieved, from Peggy in the kitchen, whose idea was that the man was “looking after our Miss Agatha again,” down to Will, who had now leisure and occasion to express his sentiments on the subject. Islay went back to his work, to make up for the lost day, having only a moderate and temporary interest in his uncle. It was the elder and the younger who alone felt themselves concerned. As for Hugh, the world seemed to have altered in these few hours; Mr. Ochterlony had not said a great deal to him; but what he said had been said as a man speaks who means and has the power to carry out his words; and the vague heirship had become all of a sudden the realest fact in existence, and a thing which could not be, and never could have been, otherwise. And he was slightly giddy, and his head swam with the sudden elevation. But as for Wilfrid, what had he to do with it, any more than any other member of the family? though he was always a strange boy, and there never was any reckoning what he might do or say.

CHAPTER XXIV

WILL’S room was a small room opening from his mother’s, which would have been her dressing-room had she wanted such a luxury; and when Mrs. Ochterlony went upstairs late that night, after a long talk with Aunt Agatha, she found the light still burning in the little room, and her boy seated, with his jacket and his shoes off, on the floor, in a brown study. He was sitting with his knees drawn up to his chin in a patch of moonlight that shone in from the window. The moonlight made him look ghastly, and his candle had burnt down, and was flickering unsteadily in the socket, and Mary was alarmed. She did not think of any moral cause for the first moment, but only that something was the matter with him, and went in with a sudden maternal panic to see what it was. Will took no immediate notice of her anxious questions, but he condescended to raise his head and prop up his chin with his hands, and stare up into her face.

“Mother,” he said, “you always go on as if a fellow was ill. Can’t one be thinking a little without anything being the matter? I should have put out my light had I known you were coming upstairs.”

“You know, Will, that I cannot have you sit here and think, as you say. It is not thinking – it is brooding, and does you harm,” said Mrs. Ochterlony. “Jump up, and go to bed.”

“Presently,” said the boy. “Is it true that Hugh will go to Oxford, mamma?”

“Very likely,” said Mary, with some pride. “Your uncle will see how he has got on with his studies, and after that I think he will go.”

“What for?” said Will. “What is the good? He knows as much as he wants to know, and Mr. Small is quite good enough for him.”

“What for?” said Mary, with displeasure. “For his education, like other gentlemen, and that he may take his right position. But you are too young to understand all that. Get up, and go to bed.”

“I am not too young to understand,” said Wilfrid; “what is the good of throwing money and time away? You may tell my uncle, Hugh will never do any good at Oxford; and I don’t see, for my part, why he should be the one to go.”

“He is the eldest son, and he is your uncle’s heir,” said Mary, with a conscious swelling of her motherly heart.

“I don’t see what difference being the eldest makes,” said Will, embracing his knees. “I have been thinking over it this long time. Why should he be sent to Oxford, and the rest of us stay at home? What does it matter about the eldest? A fellow is not any better than me because he was born before me. You might as well send Peggy to Oxford,” said Will, with vehemence, “as send Hugh.”

Mrs. Ochterlony, whose mind just then was specially occupied by Hugh, was naturally disturbed by this speech. She put out the flickering candle, and set down her own light, and closed the door. “I cannot let you speak so about your brother, Will,” she said. “He may not be so quick as you are for your age, but I wish you were as modest and as kind as Hugh is. Why should you grudge his advancement? I used to think you would get the better of this feeling when you ceased to be a child.”

“Of what feeling?” cried Will, lifting his pale face from his knees.

“My dear boy, you ought to know,” said Mary; “this grudge that any one should have a pleasure or an advantage which you have not. A child may be excused, but no man who thinks so continually of himself – ”

“I was not thinking of myself,” said Will, springing up from the floor with a flush on his face. “You will always make a moral affair of it, mother. As if one could not discuss a thing. But I know that Hugh is not clever, though he is the eldest. Let him have Earlston if he likes, but why should he have Oxford? And why should it always be supposed that he is better, and a different kind of clay?”

“I wonder where you learned all that, Will,” said Mary, with a smile. “One would think you had picked up some Radical or other. I might be vexed to see Lady Balderston walk out of the room before me, if it was because she pretended to be a better woman; but when it is only because she is Lady Balderston, what does it matter? Hugh can’t help being the eldest: if you had been the eldest – ”

“Ah!” said Will, with a long breath; “if I had been the eldest – ” And then he stopped short.

“What would you have done?” said Mrs. Ochterlony, smiling still.

“I would have done what Hugh will never do,” cried the boy. “I would have taken care of everybody. I would have found out what they were fit for, and put them in the right way. The one that had brains should have been cultivated – done something else. There should have been no such mistake as – But that is always how it is in the world – everybody says so,” said Wilfrid; “stupid people who know nothing about it are set at the head, and those who could manage – ”

“Will,” said his mother, “do you know you are very presumptuous, and think a great deal too well of yourself? If you were not such a child, I should be angry. It is very well to be clever at your lessons, but that is no proof that you are able to manage, as you say. Let Hugh and his prospects alone for to-night, and go to bed.”

“Yes, I can let him alone,” said Will. “I suppose it is not worth one’s while to mind – he will do no good at Oxford, you know, that is one thing; – whereas other people – ”

“Always yourself, Will,” said Mary, with a sigh.

“Myself – or even Islay,” said the boy, in the most composed way; “though Islay is very technical. Still, he could do some good. But Hugh is an out-of-door sort of fellow. He would do for a farmer or gamekeeper, or to go to Australia, as he says. A man should always follow his natural bent. If, instead of going by eldest sons and that sort of rubbish, they were to try for the right man in the right place. And then you might be sure to be done the best for, mother, and that he would take care of you.”

“Will, you are very conceited and very unjust,” said Mary; but she was his mother, and she relented as she looked into his weary young face: “but I hope you have your heart in the right place, for all your talk,” she said, kissing him before she went away. She went back to her room disturbed, as she had often been before, but still smiling at Will’s “way.” It was all boyish folly and talk, and he did not mean it; and as he grew older he would learn better. Mary did not care to speculate upon the volcanic elements which, for anything she could tell, might be lying under her very hand. She could not think of different developments of character, and hostile individualities, as people might to whom the three boys were but boys in the abstract, and not Hugh, Islay, and Will – the one as near and dear to her as the other. Mrs. Ochterlony was not philosophical, neither could she follow out to their natural results the tendencies which she could not but see. She preferred to think of it, as Will himself said, as a moral affair – a fault which would mend; and so laid her head on her pillow with a heart uneasy – but no more uneasy than was consistent with the full awakening of anxious yet hopeful life.

As for Will, he was asleep ten minutes after, and had forgotten all about it. His heart was in its right place, though he was plagued with a very arrogant, troublesome, restless little head, and a greater amount of “notions” than are good for his age. He wanted to be at the helm of affairs, to direct everything – a task for which he felt himself singularly competent; but, after all, it was for the benefit of other people that he wanted to rule. It seemed to him that he could arrange for everybody so much better than they could for themselves; and he would have been liberal to Hugh, though he had a certain contempt for his abilities. He would have given him occupation suited to him, and all the indulgences which he was most fitted to appreciate: and he would have made a kind of beneficent empress of his mother, and put her at the head of all manner of benevolences, as other wise despots have been known to do. But Will was the youngest, and nobody so much as asked his advice, or took him into consideration; and the poor boy was thus thrown back upon his own superiority, and got to brood upon it, and scorn the weaker expedients with which other people sought to fill up the place which he alone was truly qualified to fill. Fortunately, however, he forgot all this as soon as he had fallen asleep.

Hugh had no such legislative views for his part. He was not given to speculation. He meant to do his duty, and be a credit to everybody belonging to him; but he was a great deal “younger” than his boy-brother, and it did not occur to him to separate himself in idea – even to do them good – from his own people. The future danced and glimmered before him, but it was a brightness without any theory in it – a thing full of spontaneous good-fortune and well-doing, with which his own cleverness had nothing to do. Islay, for his part, thought very little about it. He was pleased for Hugh’s sake, but as he had always looked upon Hugh’s good fortune as a certainty, the fact did not excite him, and he was more interested about a tough problem he was working at, and which his uncle’s visit had interrupted. It was a more agitated household than it had been a few months before – ere the doors of the future had opened suddenly upon the lads; but there was still no agitation under the Cottage roof which was inconsistent with sweet rest and quiet sleep.

It made a dreadful difference in the house, as everybody said, when the two boys went away – Islay to Mr. Cramer’s, the “coach” who was to prepare him for his examination, and Hugh to Earlston. The Cottage had always been quiet, its inhabitants thought, but now it fell into a dead calm, which was stifling and unearthly. Will, the only representative of youth left among them, was graver than Aunt Agatha, and made no gay din, but only noises of an irritating kind. He kicked his legs and feet about, and the legs of all the chairs, and let his books fall, and knocked over the flower-stands – which were all exasperating sounds; but he did not fill the house with snatches of song, with laughter, and the pleasant evidence that a light heart was there. He used to “read” in his own room, with a diligence which was much stimulated by the conviction that Mr. Small was very little ahead of him, and, to keep up his position of instructor, must work hard, too; and, when this was over, he planted himself in a corner of the drawing-room, in the great Indian chair, with a book, beguiling the two ladies into unconsciousness of his presence, and then interposing in their conversation in the most inconvenient way. This was Will’s way of showing his appreciation of his mother’s society. He was not her right hand, like Hugh, nor did he watch over her comfort in Islay’s steady, noiseless way. But he liked to be in the same room with her, to haunt the places where she was, to interfere in what she was doing, and seize the most unfit moments for the expression of his sentiments. With Aunt Agatha he was abrupt and indifferent, being insensible to all conventional delicacies; and he took pleasure, or seemed to take pleasure, in contradicting Mrs. Ochterlony, and going against all her conclusions and arguments; but he paid her the practical compliment of preferring her society, and keeping by her side.

It was while thus left alone, and with the excitement of this first change fresh upon her, that Mrs. Ochterlony heard another piece of news which moved her greatly. It was that the regiment at Carlisle was about to leave, and that it was Our regiment which was to take its place. She thought she was sorry for the first moment. It was upon one of those quiet afternoons, just after the boys had left the Cottage, when the two ladies were sitting in silence, not talking much, thinking how long it was to post-time, and how strange it was that the welcome steps and voices which used to invade the quiet so abruptly and so sweetly, were now beyond hoping for. And the afternoon seemed to have grown so much longer, now that there was no Hugh to burst in with news from the outer world, no Islay to emerge from his problem. Will sat, as usual, in the great chair, but he was reading, and did not contribute to the cheerfulness of the party. And it was just then that Sir Edward came in, doubly welcome, to talk of the absent lads, and ask for the last intelligence of them, and bring this startling piece of news. Mrs. Ochterlony was aware that the regiment had finished its service in India long ago, and there was, of course, no reason why it should not come to Carlisle, but it was not an idea which had ever occurred to her. She thought she was sorry for the first moment, and the news gave her an unquestionable shock; but, after all, it was not a shock of pain; her heart gave a leap, and kept on beating faster, as with a new stimulus. She could think of nothing else all the evening. Even when the post came, and the letters, and all the wonderful first impressions of the two new beginners in the world, this other thought returned as soon as it was possible for any thought to regain a footing. She began to feel as if the very sight of the uniform would be worth a pilgrimage; and then there would be so many questions to ask, so many curiosities and yearnings to satisfy. She could not keep her mind from going out into endless speculations – how many would remain of her old friends? – how many might have dropped out of the ranks, or exchanged, or retired, or been promoted? – how many new marriages there had been, and how many children? – little Emma Askell, for instance, how many babies she might have now? Mary had kept up a desultory correspondence with some of the ladies for a year or two, and even had continued for a long time to get serious letters from Mrs. Kirkman; but these correspondences had dropped off gradually, as is their nature, and the colonel’s wife was not a woman to enlarge on Emma Askell’s babies, having matters much more important on hand.

This new opening of interest moved Mrs. Ochterlony in spite of herself. She forgot all the painful associations, and looked forward to the arrival of the regiment as an old sailor might look for the arrival of a squadron on active service. Did the winds blow and the waves rise as they used to do on those high seas from which they came? Though Mary had been so long becalmed, she remembered all about the conflicts and storms of that existence more vividly than she remembered what had passed yesterday, and she had a strange longing to know whether all that had departed from her own life existed still for her old friends. Between the breaks of the tranquil conversation she felt herself continually relapse into the regimental roll, always beginning again and always losing the thread; recalling the names of the men and of their wives whom she had been kind to once, and feeling as if they belonged to her, and as if something must be brought back to her by their return.

There was, however, little said about it all that evening, much as it was in Mrs. Ochterlony’s mind. When the letters had been discussed, the conversation languished. Summer had begun to wane, and the roses were over, and it began to be impracticable to keep the windows open all the long evening. There was even a fire for the sake of cheerfulness – a little fire which blazed and crackled and made twice as much display as if it had been a serious winter fire and essential to existence – and all the curtains were drawn except over the one window from which Sir Edward’s light was visible. Aunt Agatha had grown more fanciful than ever about that window since Winnie’s marriage. Even in winter the shutters were never closed there until Miss Seton herself went upstairs, and all the long night the friendly star of Sir Edward’s lamp shone faint but steady in the distance. In this way the hall and the cottage kept each other kindly company, and the thought pleased the old people, who had been friends all their lives. Aunt Agatha sat by her favourite table, with her own lamp burning softly and responding to Sir Edward’s far-off light, and she never raised her head without seeing it and thinking thoughts in which Sir Edward had but a small share. It was darker than usual on this special night, and there were neither moon nor stars to diminish the importance of the domestic Pharos. Miss Seton looked up, and her eyes lingered upon the blackness of the window and the distant point of illumination, and she sighed as she often did. It was a long time ago, and the boys had grown up in the meantime, and intruded much upon Aunt Agatha’s affections; but still these interlopers had not made her forget the especial child of her love.

“My poor dear Winnie!” said the old lady. “I sometimes almost fancy I can see her coming in by that window. She was fond of seeing Sir Edward’s light. Now that the dear boys are gone, and it is so quiet again, does it not make you think sometimes of your darling sister, Mary? If we could only hear as often from her as we hear from Islay and Hugh – ”

“But it is not long since you had a letter,” said Mary, who, to tell the truth, had not been thinking much of her darling sister, and felt guilty when this appeal was made to her.

“Yes,” said Aunt Agatha, with a sigh, “and they are always such nice letters; but I am afraid I am very discontented, my dear love. I always want to have something more. I was thinking some of your friends in the regiment could tell you, perhaps, about Edward. I never would say it to you, for I knew that you had things of your own to think about; but for a long time I have been very uneasy in my mind.”